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The Intersection of Life, Faith, Technology, & Science

The Personal Blog of Jack L. Wolfgang II

Note: Comments are currently disabled for this blog as it is in the process of being moved. Please bear with me as the moving process progresses. The new link for the blog will be posted when it is ready. However, guessing the new link shouldn't be too hard (neither is cheating with Google).

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Internet Explorer, Standards, and Ministry Web Sites

I am re-working an include for one of the ministries for which I am the volunteer web servant. The include handles the menu for the site, and I am trying to include a search box on the menu (on may not be the right word). What I am trying to do looks pretty good in Firefox at high resolution, gets bad at low resolution (800 x 600 and below), and really stinks in Internet Explorer, period. The code is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional with valid CSS.

Therefore, my dilemma is: is it right for a ministry web site to change their browser if their browser doesn't play well with others, errr, support standards? I know there are secular sites that have told people that their experience may be degraded in Internet Explorer and that they should upgrade their browser. However, we're a ministry, and I am not sure we should be pushing products, free or not. (I just wrote that sentence, and I realized about two shakes after I wrote it that ministries do push products: books, music, conferences, etc.; but this seems different because which browser you use has no impact on your spiritual life, does it?)

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section as I continue to work (for a bit), sleep, and think and pray about this issue.

3 Comment(s):

I cross-posted this post to some sites on technology and web design. I am cross-posting a response I got on one of the forums back here. This response set me straight on this issue, and I just wanted to say thanks TJ!

I think that you should strive for your code to be more accessible. Take the time to make it work cross-browser. You are trying to reach people. You don't want to put a barrier between your content and the people.

While better design can be implemented for a specific browser, it's still best to build a website that works on different browsers and different OSes to serve the largest possible audience. I'm still surprised by websites built in Flash, which are not search-engine friendly, and while very cool visually, not user- nor browser- friendly either.

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Jack L. Wolfgang II [Jack(drop this part if you aren't a spammer)Wolfgang@gmail.com]
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